Ok, I'll just post a brief summary here because I just got back from work (after I went to my regular twelve hour shift, I went to the Creationist meeting (the Tuesday October 26, 2010, 7:00pm, Grace Point Church of God, 720 62nd St SW, Edmonton. (AB) one), then on my way back I got lost, and wound up back close to work, so I went back and bullshitted a bit with the next shift who were blown away that I came back wearing dress clothes...etc).

Anyway, I'm tired as hell and as I remember more I'll post more.

Right after work I took off to the church where Sarfati was speaking. I missed the initial lecture but he had a book-signing then another short speech/Q&A combo.

I pointed out that several people, right off the get-go defined vestigial organs as not necessarily meaning having "NO" function. His response? He basically kept repeating the accusation. I told him he was acting like he was ignoring the answer. We got back and forth; he mentioned the "guttersite" Talk Origins, probably because he saw me reading from a paper the references (you can see some in my comment here that I was making.

I asked him where he got off on calling them "guttersnipes" or something like that; he said that he called them a "guttersite". I said that was worse.

He said that Talk Origins as an "antichristian" site, I told him that it wasn't true: Christians like Glen Morton post there. He insulted him, belittled their "christianity" or something like that..

Anyway, he kept to saying that scientists have been trying to change the definition of "vestigial" because uses kept getting found for them while I had said that they were consistent all along, the dictionary buggered up or something.

My second question:

After listening him do the "Expelled" routine of blaming all sorts of anti-semitic crap on Darwin and showing some Nazi footage (that he said was in the "Expelled" movie), I asked him if he knew that Martin Luther (the guy he praised earlier) wrote On the Jews and Their Lies.

He said he did, but that he had virtually nothing to do with the nazis: Luther was only anti-semitic as the end of his life when they refused his arguments.

I asked him: What did Darwin ever say about the Jews? He went on about how it was "darwinist" scientists or something who went for that; you'll notice that he didn't actually answer that question. I (think) I pointed out that it was Luther that Hitler admired, etc.

I said that there's a lot of stuff here, and mentioned a Christian site: Ray Comfort's Atheist Central site and if he'd heard of him. He said he hadn't, I said that maybe it was because Comfort was from New Zealand, some in the audience liked that.

Anyway, I mentioned this post where Comfort reviewed the "Expelled" movie, and that it said all the things Sarfati said. I said: Read down the comments and you'll see the commentators refuted that (or something like that)...fortunately I got cut off before I could mention that my name is where one would find all that.

If anyone there actually remembers and gives a shit, they can go to that site and just read through and see for themselves what I wanted them to see anyway. I really didn't want those berks to know my name anyhow!

We got into another argument and the church people finally got pissed off enough (I should consider myself lucky they let me go on this long, really) muttering "Next, next".

It had no effect on me other than to make me duck my head and say something that I'm damned glad the mike didn't pick up, but Sarfati and the "light" guy did eventually end it and go on to the next questioner.

EDIT: This is how stupid I am...I rembered just now the perfect question to have asked him during that argument. Sod it! What would it have been?

With all his talk of "darwinists" leading to nazism, it'd have been great to throw that ancient, xian anti-jewish curse back at him. Sigh...damnit.

Unlike a previous guy who took off after some asshole in the audience went nuts on him (Sarfati actually had to hold that guy back), I figured: Fuck. I'm staying till the end. The last thing I want is for these clowns to clap while I'm leaving or something. So, I sat until the end.

I had a nice talk with a sympathetic guy afterwards. I told him -more detail about what I had posted on Comfort's site and which name to look for it

-how the various posters on Comfort's site keep pasting him, especially some guy named Steven J. The example I gave was the evolution of genders "problem", etc.

-how some xians like Roger C. Weins (yes, I spelled the guy's name wrong when I spelled it out to this fellow) has an article called Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective that he could Google to see how Sarfati's talk of radiometric dating gets dealt with

-how if actual historians and scientists were in the crowd that the questions would have been a lot more hostile to Sarfati, etc.

He did say that Sarfati had a sympathetic audience at the church.

He, his wife, and some other guy hung around us while we talked. Kind of sad though: Only me and him talked and we never introduced ourselves to each other or to the other people, really.

Oh well: Those other people didn't speak up themselves, they just listened.

And yes, I did tell him that I was an atheist and how I got to be that way...

Maybe more later.

>From: enuffenuff@fastmail.fm(excerpt follows):> I'm looking to teach these two bastards a lesson they'll never forget.> Personal visit by mates of mine. No violence, just a wee little chat.> > **** has also committed more crimes than you can count with his> incitement of hatred against a religion. That law came in about 2007> much to ****'s ignorance. That is fact and his writing will become well> know as well as him becoming a publicly known icon of hatred.> > Good luck with that fuckwit. And Reynold, fucking run, and don't stop.> Disappear would be best as it was you who dared to attack me on my> illness knowing nothing of the cause. You disgust me and you are top of> the list boy. Again, no violence. Just regular reminders of who's there> and visits to see you are behaving. Nothing scary in reality. But I'd> still disappear if I was you.

I once called Sarfati a "jumped-up apothecary" on a forum and got banned for it (he holds a PhD in chemistry and hasn't published in his field in decades, making him something less than an honest druggist at Walgreens). If you pin him to the wall, he goes viciously ad hom. "Gutter site" and "garbage site" are his terms for any site he doesn't agree with. His own site Creation Ministries International, once Answers in Genesis Australia (but that's another story involving the scoundrel, Ken Ham), is filled with blind, creationist offal.

He truly hates Talk Origins and all associated with it.

If you get another chance, ask him what the remnants of a pelvic girdle found in pythons and cetaceans signify. And unless you are very, damned good, do not challenge him to a game of chess.

I enjoy Sarfati. When he gets really exercised, he becomes all but incoherent.

"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)

"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres

"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude

If you get another chance, ask him what the remnants of a pelvic girdle found in pythons and cetaceans signify. And unless you are very, damned good, do not challenge him to a game of chess.

Don't see as how I'd ever be able to meet him again though.

>From: enuffenuff@fastmail.fm(excerpt follows):> I'm looking to teach these two bastards a lesson they'll never forget.> Personal visit by mates of mine. No violence, just a wee little chat.> > **** has also committed more crimes than you can count with his> incitement of hatred against a religion. That law came in about 2007> much to ****'s ignorance. That is fact and his writing will become well> know as well as him becoming a publicly known icon of hatred.> > Good luck with that fuckwit. And Reynold, fucking run, and don't stop.> Disappear would be best as it was you who dared to attack me on my> illness knowing nothing of the cause. You disgust me and you are top of> the list boy. Again, no violence. Just regular reminders of who's there> and visits to see you are behaving. Nothing scary in reality. But I'd> still disappear if I was you.

>From: enuffenuff@fastmail.fm(excerpt follows):> I'm looking to teach these two bastards a lesson they'll never forget.> Personal visit by mates of mine. No violence, just a wee little chat.> > **** has also committed more crimes than you can count with his> incitement of hatred against a religion. That law came in about 2007> much to ****'s ignorance. That is fact and his writing will become well> know as well as him becoming a publicly known icon of hatred.> > Good luck with that fuckwit. And Reynold, fucking run, and don't stop.> Disappear would be best as it was you who dared to attack me on my> illness knowing nothing of the cause. You disgust me and you are top of> the list boy. Again, no violence. Just regular reminders of who's there> and visits to see you are behaving. Nothing scary in reality. But I'd> still disappear if I was you.

I remember that I tried to mention Dagobert Runes, the guy who wrote "On the Jew and the Cross" as well as some other books detailing the historical anti-semitism of Sarfati's adopted religion. I mentioned the guy's name and that his mother was in a concentration camp and I was going to mention the book titles, but Sarfi cut me off, saying that some guy who he (or the "Expelled" people used as a source?) was himself supposed to be a camp survivor.

He was quite brusque at that point...I wonder if he knew what I was about to say. Pisses me off that I let him cut me off like that.

Meh, I'm new at this.

>From: enuffenuff@fastmail.fm(excerpt follows):> I'm looking to teach these two bastards a lesson they'll never forget.> Personal visit by mates of mine. No violence, just a wee little chat.> > **** has also committed more crimes than you can count with his> incitement of hatred against a religion. That law came in about 2007> much to ****'s ignorance. That is fact and his writing will become well> know as well as him becoming a publicly known icon of hatred.> > Good luck with that fuckwit. And Reynold, fucking run, and don't stop.> Disappear would be best as it was you who dared to attack me on my> illness knowing nothing of the cause. You disgust me and you are top of> the list boy. Again, no violence. Just regular reminders of who's there> and visits to see you are behaving. Nothing scary in reality. But I'd> still disappear if I was you.

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